The general gist of the map was that it portrays the various nationalities and ethnicities of the late Empire as more or less at each others' throats. Each vignette in the map lines up with the administrative division of the Empire, see this map. The humans inside each vignette match contemporaneous stereotypes and national dress of these provinces' ethnicities- see this map. For example, the Danube Swabians, called Schwob on the map, were one of the German Volksdeutsche settlers within Hungary. The Schwob in Hungary wears the cap and pipe associated with Deutscher Michel, a symbolic personification of Germany. Much of the symbolic imagery of the map rely upon such stereotyping. Jews, who permeate the map, all have hooknoses and top hats that cover skullcaps showing that despite their new-found business-sense (all of the verse and the vignettes with Jews involves money) they remain Jews. The overall gestalt of the the map is to present a very skewed satire of the Empire and its peoples.

Ilger's map uses a rhyming doggerel and word-play to create a picture of anarchy and political unrest. This is clear in the Hungarian vignette in which a caricature of the Hungarian Prime Minister István Tisza sits on top of a globe playing the violin theme of Kossuth, a nineteenth-century Hungarian nationalist who advocated for independence. The verse goes:

The people are all here,/ and even the Israelites/ Kossuth plays the violin solo/ to the joy of the Magyars./ Swabians, Slovaks, and Romanians/ do not listen with as much ecstasy.

The globe in this case represents the outsized importance of Hungary in the Ausgleich of 1867 that transformed the Austrian Empire into Austria-Hungary. The Habsburgs were the sovereigns of Hungary, but the Hungarians managed to craft a degree of autonomy within the Empire and arranged the political structure of the Kingdom to benefit Magyars. The Ausgleich created a degree of self-importance among Magyar politicians like Tisza and there was a sense among many within the Empire that the Hungarian Diet played an outsized role within the Empire's politics because of the Ausgleich and that Hungarian nationalists aimed at the creation of a greater Hungary at the expense of minorities like the Romanians. Tisza's actual policies were more nuanced and complex, but Ilger's map has him playing the role of a neo-Kossuth that only pleases the Magyar half of the population, plus the opportunistic Jews.

The use of word-play, stereotypes, and rank antisemitism is readily apparent in the Galician vignette. The vignette of a well-dressed Pole being held by the beard by a roughed up Ruthene chained to a Jew makes sense with this bit of verse:

Land full of minor Polish nobility (szlachta) and schnaps!/ There's nothing to gain here,/ the earth revolves around the Pole/ and Austria is twisted around the Galician Poles/ The Ruthenes don't count/ but they must pay/ And his large profits/ make the Jew be appreciated by all!

Galicia was by far the poorest part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The minor Polish nobility enjoyed a privileged status within the country and the Ruthenes were often locked out of the political process. Galicia itself was in a political nether region in the imperial hierarchy, with Vienna ceding a degree of local autonomy and tax-exempt status to the gentry in exchange for loyalty. This arrangement led to the the local parliament, the Sejm, being gentry-dominated until late in the nineteenth century when local peasant parties and other non-gentry and non-Polish groups.

Ilger's ethnic satires might appear to be even-keeled, except for clear antisemitism, but the vignettes show a marked sympathy for the German and Volksdeutsche populations. In Bohemia for example, the verse notes that it is a nice, rich land, but is engaged in its own civil strife. The German population, again wearing Michel's nightcap, is being bitten by the Czech. Although this Sudeten German is also carrying a cudgel, he is far more civilized than the unshaven Czech who prefers to bite his opponent. The vignette for Lower Austria features a gilded portrait of the Christian Social mayor Karl Lueger and approves of his antisemitism:

Wherever a Jew wanders the earth/ One hears him griping about what happened in Lower Austria/ Once a Jew becomes Lower Austrian savage/ He also knows his hunter too/ but we also call out to him/ hunter's call, hail to Lueger!

The beefy Tyrolian Volksdeutsche likewise has to contend with a shrimp-like Italian irridentist. The Styrian pan-German politician Julius von Derschatta likewise looks more regal than other political figures on the map, although the verse contends he is likely too old to fight for a Styrian German people more prone to dancing than political fights.

Some of Ilger's imagery and verse is innocuous such as the grapes in Dalmatia that produce both the region's wine and contribute to the rowdiness of the sailors that hail from the Dalmatian coast. But most of the vignettes express a kind of nasty political commentary that denigrates certain minorities and portrays politics as growing increasingly vicious. This is in tune with older historiography on the late Empire such as Carl Schorske's view of how the Empire was ill-suited to the problems of both mass politics and an ethnically heterogeneous polity. Schorske for example, noted that the "politics in a new key" such as Lueger's enshrined antisemitism and racial hatred. Ilger's satirical map is one piece of evidence supporting this paradigm.

This picture of an Austro-Hungarian Empire fracturing along violent ethnic politics though has come under a degree of scrutiny in the historiography of the past two decades. Ross King for instance has noted that ethnic politics in Bohemia were far more fluid than earlier notions of entrenched and innate ethnic hostilities. Pieter Judson likewise has looked at the internal correspondence of various pan-German and other nationalist groups and found that the internal concerns were of growing indifference to the nation. While the public face of nationalist discourse concerned itself with outrages by the other and stressed national solidarity, internal reports suggested a less divided imperial polity and one in which nationalist agitation often fell on infertile soil. This positive view of the late Empire can go too far and there has been some pushback among recent Habsburgists that while the Empire was not fraying along the seams in 1914, it was not exactly a healthy polity either.

But the importance of revisionist historiography like King and Judson shows that it is important to place Ilger's map in its proper context. This was not a neutral satire of the Empire; Ilger takes certain sides and does have a cast of villains- usually Jews. Rather than being evidence a fracturing Empire, it is more useful to see the satirical map as part of a set of politics that contributed to the political tensions of the Empire's final years.